Meet Priscilla.
Singaporean, 19, fun loving, pretty.
Until recently, with not a care in the world.
Hear what she has to say:
I began my much-wearisome treatment a couple months ago after I was diagnosed with leukaemia. I have to withdraw myself from school and my busy schedule. I was nineteen and five days old when my world came crashing down on me.
I am feeling positive now. There are plenty of things for me to do, but right now I have to focus on my health. I spent time with my family and friends whom I am very close with and there are beautiful people out there who truly cares for me. I am the unfortunate one to have to fight this battle. I took this time to gather my thoughts and to re-bond with people that I barely had time to talk to in the past.
For the first period, I am easily reduced to tears. It is already hard to enough to live with the revelation that I have cancer. I was in a complete mess, both mentally and emotionally. I have bad feelings, bad days like any other person but I have my network of family and friends who cares and loves me.
What I had been through this few months had been definitely life-turning. I had seen my dad sobbing uncontrollably, I was bed-ridden for a month, looking myself into the mirror for the first time, been under the knife leaving a long scar across my abdomen, and the roller-coaster rides that I've seen my family and friends went through. I've seen my uncles and aunties reducing to tears in front of me, I've heard of friends crying for me. My cancer revelation causes a lot of heartbreaks for others, that broke my heart.
For now, I am just glad that those days were over.
I don't deny that I have my own fears and hopes. There were sleepless nights that when I think too much into the future, I'd stop hoping. There were days I woke up crying because coping with this illness was simply a tad too hard for me. I have to grapple the realities of life and death and for the fact that I have to live with cancer. As I learn to cope, I have to fight and maintain the optimism and inner peace within me.
My story is sad not because my life is taken away by this illness but because only through this I've learnt that I am a significant and precious individual in the eyes of all those that truly loves and cares for me.
I am a cancer sufferer. But I am gonna win this battle and be a cancer survivor. For me, my family, the girls and all the beautiful people out there.
Who would have thought that the last time we met would be one of her last days living as a carefree individual, with so much promise awaiting her in the future, happy memories waiting to be created and remembered for life. She was undefeatable then.
She still lives now, but wearily. Amidst the drudgery of chemotherapy and face masks, as half the person she once was. She has lost her crowning black tresses, the shining strands of youth that once drew in admirers by the flocks, and her cheeks now a sunken paleness contrasted to the glowing cherubic smiles that I recount from past encounters.
How do I comfort a person like that? What words of solace can I offer, out of politeness, kindness, or pity? Maybe I can't, because I can never know how she feels. This unshareability of pain exacerbates the loneliness of human existence; it is world destroying. It makes me feel sad as a helpless bystander.
If words fail us in the enunciation of such a deep pain, then tears of absolute anguish are almost always shed in silence. Whatever pain accomplishes, it achieves in part through its unshareability, and it ensures this unshareability in part through its resistance to language. Even if pain is amplified into a wail, or an uncontrollable sobbing, the purest of pain occurs primordially without words. And now I understand why babies cry before they learn how to speak and why adults lose their ability to speak when they cry.
But words are all we have. And that's why sad people talk more than they usually do. They seek solace in language, hoping to displace the hurt they've sustained via verbalization, in order to regain a sense of self that has been destroyed by pain. A cry that needs and wants to be heard.
Priscilla's story is a cry of pain. If I cannot offer any words for her comfort, then I will reproduce her story like an echo-chamber, hopefully displacing her injury throughout the far ends of cyberspace with every retelling of her plight, with every reminder on the fragility of life.
You can do the same for her.
She still lives now, but wearily. Amidst the drudgery of chemotherapy and face masks, as half the person she once was. She has lost her crowning black tresses, the shining strands of youth that once drew in admirers by the flocks, and her cheeks now a sunken paleness contrasted to the glowing cherubic smiles that I recount from past encounters.
How do I comfort a person like that? What words of solace can I offer, out of politeness, kindness, or pity? Maybe I can't, because I can never know how she feels. This unshareability of pain exacerbates the loneliness of human existence; it is world destroying. It makes me feel sad as a helpless bystander.
If words fail us in the enunciation of such a deep pain, then tears of absolute anguish are almost always shed in silence. Whatever pain accomplishes, it achieves in part through its unshareability, and it ensures this unshareability in part through its resistance to language. Even if pain is amplified into a wail, or an uncontrollable sobbing, the purest of pain occurs primordially without words. And now I understand why babies cry before they learn how to speak and why adults lose their ability to speak when they cry.
But words are all we have. And that's why sad people talk more than they usually do. They seek solace in language, hoping to displace the hurt they've sustained via verbalization, in order to regain a sense of self that has been destroyed by pain. A cry that needs and wants to be heard.
Priscilla's story is a cry of pain. If I cannot offer any words for her comfort, then I will reproduce her story like an echo-chamber, hopefully displacing her injury throughout the far ends of cyberspace with every retelling of her plight, with every reminder on the fragility of life.
You can do the same for her.
5 comments:
if words are all we have, then why is it that when we are confronted with something of that nature, we often don't know what to say?
if communication in the form of the spoken/written word is the bridge between humans, then how it is that words have the power to both hurt and heal?
if saying nothing says more about how you feel than saying a thousand words, then why is it that saying nothing almost never satisfies the other party?
Humans. We are made as a result of a union of two people, born in a room full of people, grow up around many people, but eventually laid to rest alone. When the dust settles, when we all move on, does it really matter what we say and do?
... *
I visited a close friend's aunt in her final stage. And I had nothing to say. I had brought a book of Shelley to read to her... and stopped halfway through one when I suddenly realised everything in it was probably too morbid.
Except my favourite, "The Invitation". Which I then read.
It was awkward. Till today, I don't know whether she appreciated my visit, or if she was relieved when I left.
Skye: By "words are all we have", I do not mean to say that words have an ultimate communicative ability. It is precisely to encapsulate the naivety of humans in their faith of something that ultimately fails.
Not knowing what to say occurs when you realize the limitation of language. Hurting and healing with words occurs when we have too much misplaced hopes on its efficacy. The same goes for not saying enough to satisfy another party; s/he thinks hearing words is sufficiently communicative.
But still, words are all we have. I am still hopeful with naivety. Sometimes. And this is why I write.
Sneexe: You mean the Shelley of Frankenstein fame? What's "The Invitation" about?
Skye:
..."I woke up with all these songs that I
wanted to write
things that I must say to you,
burning inside
but when I face you...
I lose my way --
and all of those things that I
wanted to say..."
(excerpt from a song by sneexe, 2004)
Myk:
Her husband- the poet. The Invitation is my favourite poem.
excerpts:
Away, away, from men and towns
to the wild wood and the downs...
to the silent wilderness...
where the soul need not repress
it's music, lest it should not find
an echo, in another's mind...
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